GCRI · Digital Public Infrastructure
Digital public value
Digital public infrastructure is justified by what it does for people: faster and fairer access to services, lower costs, more inclusion, new markets and better use of public money. These benefits are often assumed rather than measured, and costs and harms fall on some groups. This page sets out how public value from digital infrastructure is defined and assessed, and what evidence serves the governments, funders and citizens who judge it.
How the work runs.
Consent and inclusion board
Digital public value · Data exchange · Quarter 4
Consent artefacts
| Benefit eligibility | 6231 | 89 | 44 |
| Credit scoring | 2960 | 69 | 209 |
| Health record share | 1488 | 67 | 53 |
Inclusion
Fig.Consent and inclusion board: example names and illustrative values, not a record or a live system.
Digital public value: how the risk develops.
Accountability, public benefit and safeguards. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Value depends on use
Infrastructure creates value only when services built on it are used by people who benefit. Coverage without use delivers little.
Costs fall in different places
Savings for government may shift costs to citizens, intermediaries or excluded groups unless they are tracked.
Openness enables reuse
Open standards and digital public goods let other countries and firms reuse components, spreading benefits and lowering costs.
Harms must be counted too
Exclusion, surveillance, errors and data breaches are part of the account, and they fall unevenly.
A cascade through interdependent networks.
A hazard footprint takes out co-located assets in every layer; fragmentation, dependency between layers and overload of the survivors then spread the failure. The 3D view separates the layers by depth. Teaching model with stated illustrative values, not a prediction.
Controls
- Assets per layer
- 18
- Hazard footprint
- 8% of area
- Assets that depend on another layer
- 60%
- Spare capacity (tolerance)
- 30%
Readouts
- Assets hit by the hazard
- 11%
- Assets still working
- 28%
- Amplification of the initial damage
- 6.5 times
- Steps to settle
- 4
Numbers, methods and sources
| Step | Data centres working (%) | Networks working (%) | Power working (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 89 | 89 | 89 |
| 1 | 56 | 67 | 67 |
| 2 | 28 | 44 | 44 |
| 3 | 28 | 44 | 17 |
| 4 | 28 | 44 | 11 |
Methods
- Interdependent networks Buldyrev and others (2010), Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks, Nature 464
- Overload cascades Motter and Lai (2002), Physical Review E 66
- Betweenness load Brandes (2001), Journal of Mathematical Sociology 25
- Multilayer networks Kivela and others (2014), Journal of Complex Networks 2
- Infrastructure interdependencies Rinaldi, Peerenboom and Kelly (2001), IEEE Control Systems 21(6)
- Uncertainty fan (parameter Monte Carlo) Spiegelhalter, Pearson and Short (2011), Visualising uncertainty about the future, Science 333
- One-at-a-time sensitivity (tornado) Saltelli and others (2008), Global Sensitivity Analysis: The Primer, Wiley
Data
The model runs on the teaching values set by the controls. To calibrate it for a place, read it against these admitted layers and series, which this page's map can draw:
- Major roads Natural Earth
- Railways Natural Earth
- Seaports Natural Earth
- Airports Natural Earth
- Urban extents Natural Earth
- Night lights tonight, outages (VIIRS Day/Night Band) NASA/NOAA VIIRS (Suomi NPP) · register nasa.gibs.context-live-layers
- Natural events (NASA EONET) NASA EONET · register nasa.eonet.events
Across the six pillars, led by Nexus Consortium
- Experiments Labs
- Built in Digital Public Infrastructure in Foundry
- Tested at Digital Public Infrastructure in Universe
- Codified in Open Infrastructure and Developers in Standards
- Published in Digital Public Infrastructure in Reports
- Taught in Faculty of Technology and Digital Systems in Academy
Public value is judged by outcomes in the domains people depend on.
Findings are designed for the Evidence Brief series. The G20 Framework for DPI (2023) and the Safeguards Framework (2024) set expectations; evaluations report harms as well as benefits.
- Evaluations of DPI programmes.
- Accounts of harm or exclusion.
How digital public value is modelled, measured and tested.
The model, its assumptions, its data and its uncertainty, in the form a scientist or engineer would check. Structures follow published methods. The values drawn are illustrative, not findings.
Datasets and provenance
The data classes behind digital public value and what is recorded about each before it is used.
| Data class | Provenance recorded | Resolution stated | Licence checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Satellite imagery, optical and radar | sensor, processing level, acquisition date | pixel size and revisit | per scene |
| Reanalysis and climate model output | model, experiment, member, version | grid and time step | per release |
| In-situ sensors and gauges | station, instrument, calibration record | point and sampling rate | per network |
| Population and asset exposure | method, vintage, input sources | cell size and unit | per release |
| Boundaries and reference geography | producer, edition, date | scale | per edition |
- Lineage
- W3C PROV record from source to figure
- Principles
- FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable
- Gaps
- shown as missing, never filled silently
What is measured, and how well.
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to receive a service | days | per assessment | Service records | OBSERVED |
| Cost per transaction | currency units | annual | Agency accounts | ESTIMATED |
| User satisfaction | percent satisfied | per survey | User surveys | REPORTED |
| Leakage in transfers | percent of value not reaching intended recipients | per assessment | Audit and evaluation | ESTIMATED |
| Digital public goods adopted | count of deployments | annual | Digital Public Goods Alliance registry | REPORTED |
| Complaints and redress cases | count | annual | Ombudsman and agency records | Published statistics |
Where the evidence comes from.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Public Goods Alliance registry | Recognised digital public goods and their use | Public, DPGA terms |
| UNDP and partners DPI impact studies | Evidence on outcomes of digital public infrastructure | Public, terms per publisher |
| Rigorous evaluations of digital transfers and services | Effects on leakage, speed and welfare | Licence per publication |
| Ombudsman and audit office reports | Complaints and audits of digital services | Public records, licence per office |
| Government service performance data | Speed, cost and satisfaction | Open data where published |
Who decides, and what the evidence serves.
Digital Public Infrastructure prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Governments | Whether DPI investments deliver public value and for whom | Assessment frameworks; distributional reviews |
| Funders and development partners | Which DPI programmes to support | Evaluation evidence |
| Parliaments and auditors | How to hold DPI programmes accountable | Complaints and audit evidence |
Outputs this topic produces
- Public value assessment frameworks for DPI
- Distributional reviews of costs and benefits
- Evaluation designs for digital service reforms
- Evidence notes for funders and parliaments
What experts ask.
DPI is often justified by efficiency and inclusion, but its benefits are not automatic. Systems can be built for administrative convenience rather than people's needs, can embed bias, or can expand state or corporate surveillance. Public value requires clear purposes, measurable outcomes, independent oversight and ways for people to challenge decisions. Without them, trust erodes and the infrastructure loses legitimacy.
- What public purposes does a system serve, and how are its outcomes for people measured?
- Who benefits, who bears costs and risks, and are those distributed fairly?
- What oversight, transparency and redress mechanisms exist, and do they work in practice?
- How are safeguards against misuse, such as surveillance or discrimination, built in and monitored?
Drivers and processes.
Public value depends on purpose, distribution and accountability.
Clear objectives
Systems with defined public purposes can be evaluated against them; vague purposes invite function creep.
Distribution of benefit
Benefits often reach the connected first; costs of errors often fall on the least able to challenge them.
Oversight and redress
Independent oversight, audit, transparency reporting and accessible complaint routes.
Evaluation of DPI often measures what is easy to count, such as enrolments and transactions, rather than what matters to people, such as whether they received benefits on time, could correct errors or felt safe sharing their data. Including outcome measures, error costs and the experience of excluded groups gives a truer picture of public value.
How the evidence is built, and its limits.
- 01
Impact evaluation
Studies of outcomes such as time saved, leakage reduced and access gained. Causal attribution is difficult at national scale.
- 02
Rights impact assessment
Structured assessment of effects on privacy, equality and other rights before and after deployment.
- 03
Cost analysis
Lifecycle costs including maintenance, vendor fees and the cost of exclusion, which is often omitted.
- 04
Participatory methods
Involving affected communities in design and review, to reveal problems that metrics miss.
How it is studied, and what the methods cannot say.
- 01Data engineering, interoperability and stewardshipSecure data exchange layers · Common data models · Consent-based sharingApplied here
- 02Payment and financial market technologyFast payment system design · Fraud prevention for instant paymentsApplied here
- 03Digital identity and public digital systemsAssurance design for services · Verifiable credentials · Exclusion error analysisApplied here
Where this page's references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
Questions and answers.
What is digital public infrastructure?
What is a digital public good?
How is the value of DPI measured?
How is public value different from efficiency?
What is function creep?
Does the platform evaluate national programmes?
Who should own DPI?
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